To Upton Country Park from Flore

The route of the Nene Way only touches the southern edge of Flore, but we drove through the village, passing some attractive buildings including Flore House. In a village where most of the roads are rather narrow, we'd spotted a wider section on The Avenue opposite the village school, and parking here (SP643599) was straightforward. As Richard put his walking boots on, I walked further along the road to the Church; very pretty. We'll walk this way as part of the final leg; for now we headed past the School and along residential streets on the edge of the village before taking a footpath across the fields to the River Nene at Heyford Mill. It was a tad difficult to work out the age of the mill because it appears to have been modernised qutie recently (and there is quite a lot of new building in the area), but shortly further on, we encoutered "The Ox Hovel", a cattle shelter whose shape is as it was when sold at auction in 1758, though it would originally have been thatched. We headed south to Nether Heyford, and suddenly there we were by the Green, back at the point where we had parked when on the Grand Union Canal Walk on 15th and 29th April 2018. So, somewhat unexpectedly, we had now joined the Nene Way to our walk along the Grand Union Canal, something which we'll do more officially on the next leg.

The section of the path from Nether Heyford to Kislingbury can't be described as pretty, but it was interesting. We headed east from Nether Heyford, to the north of Bugbrooke and joined with the Northamptonshire Round and then skirted Heygates Bugbrooke Mill. The mill is now mostly modern, though there has apparently been a mill here since 1086, and it is of particular interest to us because there is another Heygates flour mill in our local town of Downham Market. In this area we started noticing chalk graffiti on each gate and bridge that we passed, attempting to convince us that Covid-19 is a hoax. We had been aware of that there are conspiracy theories in ciculation, probably not helped by the idiotic president of the US. [That comment took a certain poignancy when Donald Trump tested positive for Covid-19 later in the week, following various election campaigning with a marked lack of masks and social distancing.] We continued towards and then under the M1, and immediately afterwards the Northamptonshire Road headed north whilst we continued east to Kislingbury.

On the way into Kislingbury, we had a chat with a couple of local men, who clearly thought we had walked a very long way, despite the fact that we were a little frustrated by the shortness of today's walk. We were so busy talking that I almost missed the bench we were walking past, but Richard spotted it and we stopped for an early lunch. Kislingbury is a pretty village, especially around the Church, and in stark contrast to the earlier denial of Covid-19 there was a rough wooden cross tied to the gate into the churchyard, as a touching reminder of the suffering caused to so many as a result of the Pandemic. There was a service taking place in the Church which surprised me as it felt like the middle of the afternoon (well, we had had lunch...) but it transpired it was only about 11.20. On the way out of Kislingbury there was a pretty little bridge over the River Nene; pretty but also rather narrow so we were pleased there was an adjacent wooden footbridge.

We had expected to be turning onto an ordinary footpath for the final couple of kilometres to the car, but it turns out that Upton Country Park now extends to here (though at the time of writing the "Northampton Open Spaces" website doesn't acknowledge the extension. That's good news for the people of Northampton, though I think it probably means there will be more housing development to the north of the Park. But it meant that we turned onto a tarmacked cycleway rather than a quiet footpath; not quite what we were expecting. On a couple of occasions, the Nene Way was signposted off the cycleway to the left, but on the first occasion this would have taken us across the ploughed field and back again and on the second occasion the path signed to the left immediately encountered a barrier indicating that the path was temporarily closed (it would otherwise have taken us onto a building site), so we stayed on the cycleway. At least progress was fast, and it was nice to see famiilies out enjoying the countryside. The cycleway diverged somewhat from the route of the Nene Way shown on the OS map, but we were able to cut across a playing field to the carpark - it was actually more convenient than would have been the case if we had wanted to rejoin the Nene Way through the housing development at the point we had left it last week.

Following leg